The Martyrs of Lyon, patron saints for the falsely accused

Thomas J. Craughwell

5/26/17

Martyrs of Lyons

Feast day: June 2

Only a handful of eyewitness accounts of the sufferings of the
early martyrs have survived. The most famous is the journal St. Perpetua kept
while she was in prison in Carthage and awaiting death. But the most dramatic
is the lengthy, anonymous letter written to the churches in Asia Minor, written
by someone who witnessed the trial and grisly martyrdoms of Christians from the
cities of Lyon and Vienne in modern-day France.

In 177, persecution flared up in the cities of Lyon and Vienne in
southeastern France. It began with decrees that banned Christians from
appearing in public, moved on to attacks on Christians who dared to venture
out, expanded to breaking into and looting the homes of Christians, and reached
its climax when dozens of Christians from the two cities were arrested and
brought to trial. “The Adversary,” the author of the letter says, “fell upon us
with all his strength.”

To accommodate the large number of the accused and the huge crowd
that came to see them condemned, the magistrate moved the trial outdoors, to
the forum of Lyon. The case degenerated into a parody of Roman law. A learned
man, Vettius Epagathus, stepped forward to defend the Christians. The
magistrate rejected Vettius’ offer, then asked if he was a Christian, too.
Vettius confessed that he was, and immediately soldiers seized him and forced him
to join the huddled, frightened band of the accused. Among them was the bishop
of Lyon, Pothinus, a man over 90 years old. In the middle of the trial, the mob
of spectators attacked Pothinus, beating and kicking him so severely that
afterward he died in prison.

Some of the Christians’ pagan slaves had been arrested with them.
To avoid being tortured and executed with their masters and mistresses, these
slaves gave false testimony, that Christians were cannibals, that they
especially delighted in eating children and that they committed incest. These
lies were exactly what the mob wanted to hear, and gave the magistrate the
excuse he needed to condemn the Christians to death in the arena.

The graphic description of the martyrdom of the saints is hard to
read. In the arena, with the spectators howling for their blood, the martyrs
were mauled by wild bears, gored by wild bulls, roasted over fires, and
suffered other punishments too grisly to describe here. The author of the
letter tells us that in the arena, the Christians “made manifest their
nobleness by their patience and fearlessness and fortitude.”

Prominent among these martyrs was St. Blandina, a young slave
woman who was the last to die; St. Sanctus, a deacon; St. Maturus, who was
newly baptized; St. Biblis, whom the executioners tried to force to confess
that she was a cannibal; St. Vettius, who had offered to defend his fellow
Christians before the magistrate; St. Alexander, a physician from Vienne; and
St. Ponticus, who was only 15 years old.

Craughwell is the author of This Saint Will
Change Your Lifeand Saints Behaving Badly.